Video confession 17 – Joanne considers the Asus Eee for Teaching

We are looking again at the use of cheap and small mobile computers – UMPcs and in particular the Asus Eee PC. In the video I describe some of the history of mobile computing at the college, the current position and the paradigm being explored with the Asus Eee. Joanne gives her assessment of the Asus Eee and her ideas on how it could be used in teaching within her area.

Over the last 6 years the college has invested, developed and supported mobile IT for academic staff for resource preparation, presentation and MIS access such as e-registration in the classroom. We have built out a wireless network to cover most areas of the college and provided staff on 0.5 contracts and above with their own tablet computer linked into the staff IT systems and college resources.

There has been much discussion recently about new educational methods and we have been experimenting with the ways in which new technologies such as web 2 and mobile computers can be applied in education.

We provided the Foundation team at Hammersmith with three Asus Eee PCs for evaluation and ideas about how they could be applied in teaching in the foundation area. Joanne came back with a very positive response to the Asus Eee and talks in the video about using the Asus in lessons for information research in a more flexible way than possible in a traditional IT suite with rows of desktop computers.

We are experimenting with a new student IT paradigm here – the student computers are not running any Microsoft software and are not linked to the college student domain (or printers for that matter) – they are pure web access devices ideal for use with independent Internet cloud computing applications.

Experiments with these computers will provide some information on what future student IT use in the college may be like and I’m looking forward to seeing them used with students – watch this space.